The marriage of mind and machine

General Electric introduces its “Industrial Internet”

Until recently, the Internet was all about you. Your photos on Facebook. Your interests in an RSS reader. Your favorite songs playing in the background. But new low-cost sensors and advanced software are making the Internet a little less about you and a little more about the machines all around us.

“The Internet has changed the way we consume information and talk with each other, but now it can do more,” explained General Electric (GE) CEO Jeff Immelt. “By connecting intelligent machines to each other and ultimately to people, and by combining software and big data analytics, we can push the boundaries of physical and material sciences to change the way the world works.”

Immelt and his company are leading the charge toward what they call the “Industrial Internet,” a marriage of human insight and smart machines, an open, global network that connects machines, people, and data.

Industrial Internet Data Loop (via GE)

GE is the nation’s largest industrial company, producing aircraft engines, locomotives, and medical equipment, and they’ve begun installing sensors on all of their products. With 250,000 machines installed, the potential influx of data is huge, and the company is hard at work designing software for gathering data and algorithms for sifting through it.

On November 29, Immelt kicked off the company’s conference on the industrial Internet, “Minds and Machines 2012,” introducing the idea that GE’s smart machines may be able to alert their owners when they need maintenance, preorder their own parts and save both GE and consumers time and money.

During the conference, GE unveiled nine specific new technologies, several of which are outlined below, and promised to announce 20 more such technologies in the next year:

Transportation and distribution During the Minds and Machines conference, GE disclosed three services aimed at this sector.

Taleris uses data from aviation parts sensors to diagnose on the fly. GE says that 20 sensors built into all of its jet engines are already generating nearly a terabyte of data on a single cross-country flight—a huge wealth of information that can be used to analyze what maintenance steps are needed even before a plane lands.

RailConnect Transportation Management and Movement Planner uses analytics to move freight around more intelligently. Utilizing data from trains—including weight and travel terrain—they can reduce unnecessary braking and curb fuel consumption by up to 10 percent.

Healthcare In the healthcare area, GE introduced two new technologies.

To reduce wait times and increase efficiency, Hospital Operations Management combines data about bed assignments, patient flow and equipment. The system is already being tested at Mount Sinai Medical Center, where it monitors patients as they’re admitted, alerts staff to prepare the right kind of room, and calculates the patient load the hospital can expect at a given time.

Mount Sinai has seen an increase in effectiveness, allowing them to run at near 95 percent capacity—10% higher than the industry goal. GE estimates that this will translate into roughly 10,000 more patients treated a year and millions in savings and additional revenue over several years.

GE also introduced DoseWatch, software designed to help healthcare providers monitor a patient's radiation dosage.

Utilities Grid IQ is GE’s software for utility companies, helping them to monitor the grid more dynamically. San Diego Gas & Electric has been utilizing the solution to manage data from its 2,000 power resources, but COO Mike Niggli has said that consumers also benefit from the software. “Now we know before you do that the power is out,” Niggli said. “In the last month we’ve had workers on the job eight to 10 times fixing power failures before anyone called in.”

Similarly, First Wind, a wind-based power company, is using GE sensors and software to keep close track of their turbines, allowing them to tweak them for efficiency. Upgrades on 123 turbines have so far delivered a 3 percent increase in energy output, about 120 megawatt hours per turbine a year or roughly $1.2 million in additional revenue a year.

First Wind increased energy output with GE’s sensors. (via hult.edu)

Beyond GE The concept of machines talking to machines to increase efficiency isn’t new. In fact, it’s been around for years. The concept was given a name—The Internet of Things—in 1999 by Kevin Ashton, cofounder and executive director of the Auto-ID Center at MIT.

In 2008, IBM President, Chairman and CEO Samuel J. Palmisano introduced his company’s spin on the idea of the industrial Internet. Their “Smarter Planet” initiatives and advertising campaign aims to create more efficient systems for utility grids, traffic management, food distribution, water conservation and health care.

Several years since its establishment, IBM claims its working on more than 2,000 projects worldwide that fit into the Smarter Planet scheme, including a massive program in Dubuque, Iowa, where the company and local government have teamed up to more-efficiently monitor the city’s use of water, electricity and transportation with impressive results.

Cisco recently unveiled a similar organizing principle of interactive and interacting machines, calling it “The Internet of Everything,” although no actual products have been offered. "If you look back at the year 2000, maybe 200 million devices were connected. Today it's 10 billion. In 2020, it is 50 billion," says CEO John Chambers. "We believe it will change every aspect of people's lives."

In some ways, this type of big data analysis is the next clear step in our digital evolution. But just how world-altering is General Electric’s Industrial Internet?

Criticism Whenever any kind of personal data is involved, privacy and security are concerns—and certainly that is the case here. Neither GE’s Industrial Internet report nor its Minds and Machines conference dealt with security implications at length, but there’s no question that the possibility of data theft and system attacks or failures will need to be addressed before privacy-weary consumers get on the machine-to-machine bandwagon.

While many critics call out the program for its lack of security-minded foresight, there’s little doubt that an increase in data and the ability to analyze that data to create a holistic view would present tremendous benefits and broadly sweeping implications that will change the landscape of every industry. But even taking the potential massive cost-savings into account, there’s no way to deny that these changes will result in loss of jobs—as machines are replaced with digital versions that can collect information without human assistance.

GE asserts that increased speed and efficiencies in all areas of industry will increase economic growth, create more jobs and bring up living standards, completely changing out world in much the same way that the spread of economies of scale did during the industrial revolution.

GE calls its Industrial Internet the third wave of the industrial revolution (via GE)

Economist Robert Gordon rejects that idea that the industrial Internet is part of a society-changing industrial revolution. The latest technological developments, he argues, will not be able to sustain rapid economic growth for as long as the first two industrial revolutions. Instead, he claims that the majority of recent tech-related creativity has gone into communications technologies, and while those tools are certainly getting smaller and smarter, they “do not fundamentally change labor productivity or the standard of living.”

Others, like David Linthicum, founder of technology consultancy Blue Mountain Labs, see GE’s Industrial Internet as nothing more than some marketing buzz words. “It shows me that GE is trying to spin their existing product lines in different ways to sell more products,” he told Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Indeed, even GE admits that the Industrial Internet strategy dates back to 2009, when the company was struggling with the financial crisis and looking for ways to add to its revenue.

Whether it’s a planet-saving revolution or just another tech bubble, intertwining the digital world with the world of machines is certainly something to keep an eye on as it develops.